A View of Teaching and My Intership at Screven County High School, Sylvania

Talking about teaching, someone will say ‘I am a good teacher as I have been teaching for years’. Then, a question will be ‘Is it the requirement to be a good teacher after having taught for years?’ You would say NO! There are many young teachers (Ron Clark, Andrea Peterson) who can teach and motivate the students well. What is the standard to motivate the students in the classroom? Some teachers will answer simply by saying that you are a good teacher if there is no student sleeping in the class during your teaching. During my observation in SCHS, I found one or two students sleeping in the classroom while the teacher was teaching. The teacher sometimes lets them sleep during the class because they know the consequences of losing parts of the lesson. The teacher told me that the students felt sleepy because they worked in the evening after school.

Another reason to prove that you are a good teacher is that all the students are active to give their answers to your questions or their opinions to respond your topics. The class becomes very boring if you teach monotonously from one part to another part or from one day to another day. There is a good point from my partner teacher that she can make her students pay attention fully to her that no one talks to his/her friends when she is giving an explanation. In other words, students shut up their mouths during her class except they are asked to give their opinion. Ron Clark has shared his way of teaching and motivating his students through songs and dances. He can make his class fun so that the students really enjoy and learn the lessons well. Even we enjoyed almost two hours of his presentation at Youth-Risk Seminar. Andrea Peterson also shared her ideas of motivating her students in her class. With her caring and loving, she can understand her students (their needs and characters).

To motivate our students, we don’t need to change to be someone else like Ron Clark or Andrea Peterson. What we have to do is do the best thing we can do for the students as our motivation to teach. We have to keep motivating our students extrinsically and intrinsically. The students got bored because the teacher was boring in the classroom. We can not blame on the students that they did not pay attention or even slept in the class. We believe if we create various plans, design challenging materials, and teach them interestingly every single minute, our students will enjoy our class. We will also feel that teaching in 55 minutes seems to be a very short period.

On this occasion, I would like to share my experience how to motivate my students when I taught them how to read and paraphrase a poem last week. Actually, I don not teach literature much in Indonesia but my partner teacher, Ms. Sherry Taylor asked me to teach her students. Then, I decided to try to teach them. To teach a poem is usually boring for some teachers and also for the students to learn. I kept thinking how to teach a poem interestingly in 55 minutes. Can you imagine? What I was worried before teaching is that the students might get bored and sleepy after the first few minutes in the classroom.

I designed the first five minutes for questions and answers. The students responded their ideas curiously but some students said that literature was boring to discuss and learn. They seemed to start finding a good position to sleep. I kept trying my best. Then, I taught them a poem entitled “Feelings” by Yvonne Lowe. Here is the poem:

Feelings
Yvonne Lowe - Age 8

I was angry and mad.
And it seemed that there was hot water inside me.
And as I got madder and madder,
The water got hotter and hotter all the time.
I was in a rage.
Then I began to see colors.
Like black and red.
Then as I got madder and madder,
My eyes began to pop out of my head.
They were popping up and down.
It was horrible.
And it would not stop.
I was steaming with anger.
Nobody could stop me.
My mother could not stop me.
Then it was gone.
And I was all right.
Horrible, black, madness.

The students read and paraphrased the poem in another 10 minutes. I asked them to visualize the poem. I chose the best visualization and gave a present (origami of a rose bud) as an extrinsic motivation. They asked me, “Sir, did you make the flower?” The class was getting more interesting as I noticed that nobody tried to sleep. Then, I asked them to work in a group of three and make a new poem by changing some opposite words from the poem. For example, they could start ‘I was happy and glad’ for the first line. After that, each group represented one narrator to read their new poem. With the help of my partner teacher as a jury, I created a poetry reading competition in the class. The students felt challenged to win the competition. The class was great although I taught in the 7th period.

Last but not least, as long as you are willing to create something interesting, they will enjoy your class every single minute.